Dave, Jenn & the boys are working in Niger to help develop the Free Methodist Church.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Sad news

I have some sad news to share today. We
have been away taking courses but while we were away their was a serious
accident on building site. We have been building with a special kind of
compressed earth brick. The bricks are very dense and insulate better against
the Nigerien heat. However they are also very susceptible to water and need to
be treated with a special coating or covered with a layer of cement to prevent
them from dissolving. A little bit water is not a problem but a lot can be
disastrous. I spoke with the architect in May about this since the bricks had
not been covered yet and rainy season was about to begin. Not only that, the
top floor had not been entirely roofed in but was waiting for the cooling
tower. The architect had originally intended to put the tower in earlier around
January or February but had shifted to installing the wiring instead. When I
spoke to him about this, he said he wasn’t particularly concerned because Niger
doesn’t get a lot of rain to begin with.

While we were away their was a huge rain
storm that started around 10 PM and didn’t stop until 5 or 6 AM the following
morning. The guard who lived on site to watching over the workers equipment had
been living on the main floor with his family. Around 8 AM he noticed some of
the bricks near the ceiling starting to crumble and realized what was about to
happen. He called his wife to grab their small child and get out while he got
the workers out of the building. When the others were out he himself went out
and found his wife standing alone. He asked her where their three-year-old was
and she replied that she was still sleeping inside and didn’t want to disturb
her! He chewed his wife out and then finally went back in to retrieve his
daughter. He threw the child over his shoulder and was about to step off the
front porch when the building came down on top of them both.One worker had remained stranded on the roof
of the building but managed to stay on top of it all as it came down, receiving
only a few scratches and bruises. The guard and his daughter did not survive
buried under the rubble.

Our architect was kept in police detention
as a result of the deaths. A preliminary inquest was done to ascertain if the
foundation had been properly laid and the initial response is yes, it was dug
into an appropriate depth. The architect was known to have had a positive
relationship with the guard, so his extended family declined to press charges
and he has been released. I spoke with him yesterday for the first time since
our return over the weekend. He felt that two things had happened to bring
about the situation. First he admitted that the lack of roof had allowed a
large quantity of rainwater to collect in the interior of the building. He also
felt that the electricians had perhaps significantly weakened certain bricks by
cutting into them to run some of the wiring. This observation was based on the
fact of where the bricks initially began to crumble and how the building fell
in two stages (the front went down first followed by the back end).

I have visited the site where our building
once stood. The first floor ceiling and the roof which were made of cement are
still more or less intact though bent and twisted but the rubble of the bricks
are scattered all around. They even knocked down some of our outer wall and the
neighbour’s house that was connected to it.

Our architect has communicated his
intention to rebuild and replace what has been lost despite the fact that he
has no insurance. When I visited him yesterday, the strain of this ordeal was
clearly written on both his face and the face of his wife. The fact that people
were killed in this accidence remains with him and he has not been able to sleep.
Moreover, the whole affair has been on local television news including an
interview with him about the bricks he has been using to build. (We were not
the first to use these bricks; he has already built a couple of homes,
including his own, as well as a hospital for another Christian organization—all
of which are still standing).

The first job over the next few weeks is to
begin to clean up the mess, which may not be easy. In the mean time we will be
reconsidering our building plan. The architect is concerned about the negative
press that his bricks have received and would like to make some changes. I have
suggested a structure where cement posts hold the weight of the building with
perhaps the red bricks functioning as insulation rather bearing the load of the
building. Connected with this of course is the public perception of our
property in the neighbourhood.To
rebuild exactly the same building may not inspire confidence and safety among
the neighbours and community we would like to reach.

We invite you to pray with us for this
building project and the ministry initiative that it represents. We know that
God is able to take our tragedies and our failures and use them to accomplish
his will and mission. We invite you to pray particularly for our architect who
is not only a brother in Christ but a church planter, with his own
congregation. Pray also for the grieving who have lost loved ones.We also would appreciate your prayers for
Jennifer and I. We have both been taking courses this summer and have
assignments yet to complete. Jennifer is actually still in Germany as I write
completing her last classes before her return on Saturday.

2 comments:

Dave and Jen. My heart is in heaviness for you, the builder, the guard's family, and the neighbourhood. Father God you are too wise for this to be a mistake. Comfort your children through this tragic time. Strengthen your people as they seek you. AMEN

Counter

About Me

Dave and Jenn are presently somewhere in the northern part of the city of Niamey working on learning Zarma (a local language) and trying to establish the "Eglise Methodist Libre du Canada" in Niger. Cole and Ben are their two sons that get to come along for the adventure too!